Funerary Flowers
by AuroraExecution
Summary: Aphrodite always wanted to die surrounded by his roses. After all, he'd never had anything else.


**Disclaimer:** Not mine, nope.

**Notes:** I suddenly really, REALLY wanted to write something for Aphrodite, portraying him in an in-character, realistic, yet sympathetic way. I have no idea why, but here it is.

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Funerary Flowers

Ever since he was five years old, Aphrodite had always wanted to die among his roses.

It was the year he had started training, in icy-cold, isolated Greenland, and on the very first day, Master had showed him the true power of the roses he was to wield. For years, Aphrodite had yearned for those roses. After that first demonstration, Aphrodite never saw the roses anymore, and spent all his days running and swimming and fighting. He had learned how to use his Cosmo, how to kill, how to move at the speed of light.

Many thought less of Aphrodite for avoiding contact in his battles, but he was the only one who knew what he had sacrificed in order to have the power to do so. He had been wounded and exhausted and frozen to his bones, and in all of Sanctuary, only Aphrodite could compare with Camus's ability to survive in frigid conditions. But, when he had finished, and Master had handed him his first Demon Rose, Aphrodite had felt a wave of pride. He had survived, and he had matured, and he was good enough for the beautiful roses now.

Master had not been kind. Not like the Andromeda boy's master. Not like Leo Aiolia's master. Not like the Eagle Saint had been to her charge. Aphrodite's Master had believed in nothing, besides himself and beauty. Because those, Master said often, were the only two things anyone could ever be sure of. Aphrodite thought his master's logic was flawless. So, when Master disallowed him friendship, when Master told him he should follow only whomever was most beautiful, most glorious, Aphrodite swallowed his questions and protests, and obeyed. After all, he had never been taught morals. Beauty and himself, those were his benchmarks. Things like love, or cruelty, or sympathy, or dispassion--those had no place in Aphrodite's simple world of black and white and red.

Sometimes, though, in the spare moments of his vacant life, he had a single dream. He wanted to die among the roses he loved: the hypnotic red ones, the vicious black ones, and the deceptively pure white ones. For all his life, he had believed only in beauty, and his roses were the ultimate most beautiful creations in the world. He wanted to die surrounded by beauty, and he would be happy that way.

He had never really believed in Athena. She had never helped him when he needed it, never saved him, never made him stop hurting. No one could do that. Therefore, Athena, who should have been able to, could not possibly exist. That was the logic he had always used, and it had never failed him yet. No one in the world could hold him, in spite of all the things he knew he was, and forgive him and teach him about compassion and humanity. Certainly not another human--Aphrodite had no friends, and, despite all the looks he received, he had never been interested in taking a lover--and though Athena should have been able to, Aphrodite had already convinced himself she did not exist.

The only "friends", the only "lovers", the only "family" that Aphrodite had ever knew, were the soft prickly blossoms in his hands. Roses he understood. Roses bloomed at the same time every year, and it was always the same season when they fell again. Roses had thorns, but once you were used to them, you could avoid the thorns easily. Roses showed themselves as long as you kept them fed. No one else may have cared, but the roses always loved Aphrodite. They always let him love them in return.

Of all the people he had ever met, only the Andromeda Saint had seen everything in his eyes, behind the mask of arrogance. No one else ever knew Aphrodite wanted anything more than simply to kill and dominate and stand high on the pedestal.

And after Aphrodite had fallen, and, at long last, roses had covered his cooling body, Shun was the only one who gave the dead warrior a nod in respect.

Shun was the only one who thought it was natural for one to be buried by those one loves most.

Shun was the only one who understood that Aphrodite had never had anything else.


End file.
